‘The press has gotten away from its traditional job of just telling readers what the news is.’

A
New York Times
magazine travel article about Hawaii carries a subheadline describing the journey as “a desperate bid to escape the news.” The Times Sunday etiquette column led with a question from a reader who wrote in a letter that began, “Lately I’ve been feeling depressed about the news, so I decided to avoid it.”

The Times technology columnist,
Farhad Manjoo,
wrote a column about how he spent an entire week in which he “didn’t read, watch or listen to a single story about anything having to do with our 45th president.”

A Times shopping column about a store that sells men’s pajamas at prices starting at $266 a pair includes this complaint from the work-from-home journalist who wrote it: “the house no longer feels like such a safe space. There are CNN and all the other news channels on my TV, alerts from The New York Times and The Washington Post on my phone screen. Anxiety is persistent.”

The president of the American Enterprise Institute,
Arthur Brooks,
wrote a New York Times op-ed piece under the headline, “Depressed By Politics? Just Let Go.” . . .

It all amounts to a statement about journalism today. The press has gotten away from its traditional job of just telling readers what the news is. Its new, self-appointed role involves advising people how they should feel about the news and how to get away from it.

In so doing, the Times discloses a certain set of assumptions about the ideological uniformity of its own readership. After all, there may have been some Americans who could have used all this advice about dealing with news-related anxiety and depression back during the Obama administration.